B'Tselem Knocks Goldstone Report

CAMERA/Snapshot

30 September 09

Over the years, B'Tselem has hardly shown itself to be a beacon of accuracy and fair treatment of Israel (see here, here, here, and here). It is therefore notable that B'Tselem director Jessica Montell has come out critically against the Goldstone report. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The UN Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Report are either biased or mistaken in some of their fundamental accusations against Israel, according to B'Tselem human rights group director Jessica Montell.

She said the council was wrong in its gravest accusations against Israel. These include the claim that Israel intentionally targeted the civilian population rather than Hamas, and the "weak, hesitant way that the report mentions Hamas's strategy of using civilians [in combat]." . . .

"There's no question that the HRC, which mandated the Goldstone [fact-finding mission into the Gaza fighting], has an inappropriate, disproportionate fixation with Israel," she said.

She added that the council was "a political body made up of diplomats, not human rights experts, which means that the powerful states are never going to come under scrutiny the way the powerless will. So China, Russia and the US will never have commissions of inquiry, regardless of how their crimes rank relative to Israeli crimes."

But in her accusation that Israel has brought the report upon itself by failure to conduct internal investigations, Montell, like Goldstone and his team, ignores Israeli investigations that have been completed or are underway.